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Democracy in Indonesia: The Next Test

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Indonesians head to the polls for the country’s third parliamentary election in 10 years on Thursday, in what is expected to be a largely peaceful vote.

The exception may be in the northernmost province of Aceh, where attacks on supporters of the leading local party and mutual suspicion between former independence fighters and the military are threatening a still fragile peace. A large security presence is planned for election day in Aceh and in the resource-rich province of Papua.

By most accounts, democracy is flourishing in Indonesia, no small feat considering its history of political violence and the turmoil that followed the downfall of Suharto, the country’s longtime authoritarian ruler, in 1998. Indonesians have mostly embraced the democratic process, and an energetic news media faces few restrictions.

The parliamentary election on Thursday will be the first in which Indonesians will vote directly for a candidate rather than a political party. It is seen as an important gauge of the country’s democratic reforms since the ouster of Suharto.

More than 38 political parties are vying to win at least a fifth of the 560 seats in the national Parliament, or 25 percent of the popular vote, which under new election laws would allow them to put forward a candidate to challenge the incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in the presidential election in July.

Mr. Yudhoyono and his Democratic Party are widely expected to be victorious in both the parliamentary and presidential elections. But it is not clear if he will be able to win by a wide enough margin to avoid forming an unstable coalition government. Mr. Yudhoyono was forced to join with Golkar, Suharto’s former party, to win the presidency in 2004.

Mr. Yudhoyono, a former general, is the country’s first directly elected president. He is credited with helping to stabilize the economy, which has so far weathered the global financial crisis more successfully than many of its regional counterparts. Mr. Yudhoyono’s administration has pushed through free-market measures that have encouraged more foreign investment.

It has also made strides, though sometimes slowly, in routing endemic graft by establishing an independent court to prosecute corruption cases.

Though the election is expected to be relatively smooth, voting problems are perhaps inevitable in a country of 240 million people that sprawls over thousands of islands. Election monitors have said they are concerned about fraud of the kind that occurred in gubernatorial elections in East Java this year, when investigators found voter lists that included fictitious names, children and dead people.

By Wednesday, many polling stations said they had still not received ballots, and a new system for punching the ballots was expected to cause some confusion. Several major parties said they would consider rejecting the results because of the pre-election disorder.

Aceh, where local parties will for the first time compete for local seats against the more established national parties, is the region with the greatest potential for instability.

The Free Aceh Movement fought for independence for nearly 30 years before it signed a peace agreement with the Yudhoyono government in 2005, months after a devastating tsunami and earthquake killed more than 180,000 people across the region.

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A central element of the peace deal is the right to establish local political parties.

In the months leading up to the election, dozens of grenade attacks, shootings and other forms of intimidation have been directed toward the Aceh Party, the political vehicle of the former rebels. Five Aceh Party officials have been shot dead by unknown assailants, one as recently as April 4.

“I am, of course, nervous,” said Oki Tiba, a candidate for the Aceh Party. “For instance, I try not to travel the streets late at night. The peace here is still tenuous and I worry if the police don’t solve these crimes, the peace could be in jeopardy.”

Aceh Party officials are careful not to accuse anyone of the attacks publicly, but the party’s rank and file believe that the military is to blame. Many in the military suspect that the former rebels still harbor hopes for independence and regard Aceh Party success at the polls as a potential threat to national unity.